


Lasers in the Jungle

by raininshadows



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-14 05:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raininshadows/pseuds/raininshadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lapis didn't fight the Crystal Gems for a while, on Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lasers in the Jungle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheScribblingArtist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheScribblingArtist/gifts).



> Hi! I hope you like this.

Lapis Lazuli, Facet 5J0F, Cut 601, nominally came to Earth as a warrior. She wasn’t much respected on Homeworld, but Lapises were rare gems, and the Diamond Authority kept track of them for use on the water-heavy planets. They were useless on Homeworld and any other planet without a lot of water, but a good Lapis in the right place could turn around an entire war, and a planet that was seventy percent water and experiencing a rebellion was the perfect place to deploy one. Lapis herself was never consulted, but that was only to be expected. 

Lapis was assigned a soldier called Vermarine as her bodyguard shortly after arrival on Earth. Vermarine was substantially taller than Lapis and built like any other Kindergarten gem. She was less than thrilled to be tasked with following around a Lapis and making sure she didn’t get shattered by one of the Crystal Gems, and she wasn’t subtle about her lack of interest in this job, but she saw it as a potential boon to her reputation. 

Lapis’s first few months on Earth were spent doing support work, which she was as happy with as she was going to be happy with anything on this planet. A Lapis was far too valuable to be expended in combat without a good reason, and there was so much water on this planet, the Authority could always find a use for her - pulling water out of the way to allow construction, or moving something too heavy for even a Kindergarten soldier to easily relocate it. If the Authority had gotten their way, Lapis would never have seen combat. 

Her first real battle was when she’d been on Earth for three months and two weeks. She was working with a massive river, in one of the hottest, wettest regions of the planet - it needed to be temporarily rerouted in various places for some of the shard injections that would form the Cluster, and the river was just too big for it to be efficient to have the soldiers do it. The humans there had long since learned to leave the giant women who were strange colors alone, so there wasn’t much for Vermarine to worry about; she was busy talking to Onyx, a member of the team that was preparing the shard injections. Lapis privately suspected they were flirting. 

The first sign of trouble was the flicker of white out in the distance. Lapis didn’t really notice it at the time. There was a lot of strange wildlife in this part of this world. The Empire had seen nearly every form of inorganic life it was possible to create, but the variety and strangeness of organics was still new, and the rainforest had an amazing number of species even for Earth. 

The next sign was the Rebellion’s Pearl nearly stabbing Vermarine. Onyx, standing next to her, screamed and jumped away; Vermarine reflexively materialized her axe into her hand and tried to cut the Pearl in half. Lapis, who had been focusing on keeping the full flow of the river diverted into the alternate channel while the injection team set up, nearly let it flow back into its usual course. 

Pearl vanished back into the trees almost as quickly as she’d come, and Vermarine didn’t bother chasing her; instead she moved to protect Lapis, making sure to keep Lapis between her and the empty riverbed. Out in the forest, every flicker of motion suddenly became a potential Rebel. The team that had been working on the core injection glanced around nervously, very aware that the only thing between them and the vast torrent of water was Lapis’s ability to focus, and then redoubled their efforts to finish before the Rebels returned. Every gem stationed on Earth had heard the stories of the Pearl that rebelled, turned her hand to swordfighting, and became disturbingly effective at it. Nobody wanted to fight her. 

Suddenly, the Pearl reappeared. Vermarine managed to get between her and Lapis, but Pearl’s sword came within inches of her skin. Pearl kept pushing her towards the riverbed, occasionally glancing over at Lapis momentarily, as if trying to figure out when she could break away from Vermarine to attack Lapis. 

“We’re almost ready!” Onyx called up from the bottom of the riverbed. Once the injection was ready, the river could return to its normal course while the shards made their way to the core of the Earth. “Just need to get this final alignment.” 

Pearl, who’d finally managed to back Vermarine to the edge of the riverbed, suddenly broke off the attack and turned towards Lapis. Lapis had been given some very basic training in how to use her powers to protect herself, but she’d never had the natural talent or inclination to use a real weapon; that was why Vermarine had been assigned to protect her to begin with. 

There was a loud thud from the riverbed, and Onyx yelled “Done!” Out of the corner of her eye, Lapis saw the injection team scrambling up the far bank of the riverbed. She let the great river flow back into its path and dove in, letting it pull her downstream and out on the far side. Pearl vanished back into the trees as quickly as she’d appeared, leaving Vermarine alone. 

Lapis got better at working under pressure over time. The battle in the rainforest was the first time she was caught in a battle between Empire forces and the Rebellion, but not the last by any means, and the last thing anyone wanted was for her to accidentally drop half an ocean on her own side. Vermarine grew increasingly paranoid, sending in not-infrequent requests for backup, perhaps even a full squad. Her requests were consistently denied. 

When Lapis was finally wounded by a Crystal Gem, the Authority combined her dislike of Earth and her unusual tendency to attract the Crystal Gems and concluded she was one of them. She spent millennia in the mirror waiting for someone to find her, abandoned on the floor of the Galaxy Warp. Eventually, she concluded nobody would.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble". 
> 
> _I believe these are the days of lasers in the jungle_  
>  _Lasers in the jungle somewhere_  
>  _Staccato signals of constant information_  
>  _A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires_


End file.
